Amy Meyerson, The Water Lies

About: Psychological suspense set in the claustrophobic, Rear Window-esque Venice Canals neighborhood of L.A. After a body is found outside her home, a young woman, heavily pregnant with her second child, teams up with the dead girl’s mother to find out what really happened.

Verdict: A good story that felt a little too long. I was distracted by the weird physical descriptions (the protagonist’s uterus is often thudding or pounding, and her tailbone throbs and thuds) and the repeated use of the same trope—one of the characters running off at a critical juncture, overwhelmed by some emotion or other, without telling the other what’s going on.

Publication: 2025 · 347 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars